Of All the Western Stars
by aldkhfa142
Summary: AU, divergent from Season 2 finale. Dean's in denial, Sam's running out of patience, and there's a man with yellow eyes brewing tea in the kitchen. ...Wait...
1. I:i For Momentum to Catch

**Of All the Western Stars**

**Authors: **Skadu and Elaeazeph**  
Rating:** R, for strong language and violence**  
Warnings:** Contact the authors with specific concerns.**  
Synchronicity: **Divergent universe, post _All Hell Breaks Loose, Part II  
_**Disclaimer: **_Supernatural _is the property of Eric Kripke and his colleagues. We don't claim ownership. But Toby (fucking) Parsons is _all ours._ Rah!**  
Summary:**

The brothers Winchester emerge from the graveyard in Wyoming to a turbulant atmosphere where hunters don't trust them and demons are too eager to assist. Azazel's death has stirred the supernatural world and set in motion plans that eclipse anything Sam and Dean have yet encountered. And amongst it all, they must establish a balance between Dean's need to keep moving away from his fate and Sam's desperate desire to stand still and fix it.

**A/N:** This is the result of many, many months of collaborative fic, just now being put into a postable phase. Written by the both of us, and edited extensively by Elaea, who is... pretty much the most badass partner-in-crime one could possibly ask for.

This fic is also available at its Livejournal forum, "westernstars", which you can find through my profile. I also highly recommend Elaeazeph's other work.

Alright, kids. Buckle up. It's a hell of a ride.

* * *

_I.i For Momentum to Catch_

The cellphone in Dean's pocket vibrates. It probably erupts into agitated sound, too, but he can't hear it above the wailing of the banshee in the opposite corner of the room. Instead, he vaults over the couch and kneels behind it, avoiding being struck by a lamp or bookend or whatever-the-fuck the bitch is using for ammunition. He reloads the clip in his Glock--which, really, isn't doing wonders for him against a ghost--and peers around the far side of the couch for the handle of the shotgun that scattered there.

A power cord, attached to the old television set that soars past him, whips him across the face. Dean ducks back behind cover and swears. "A little help here would be great!"

The brothers Winchester are in the second story of an old, Victorian-style home host to a particularly violent banshee. When the salt-and-burn tactic failed, on account of cremation, they came to the house in search of whatever trinket might be keeping the woman here. But Dean--high on life and adrenaline and whatever else has been his excuse for the reckless, fast-paced weeks since Sam's resurrection--had charged into the house without pause or plan, leaving Sam to chase after. Which is why Dean is now being driven closer to the balcony that overlooks a small cliff and windy moor, and Sam's foot and shotgun are pinned underneath a heavy cedarwood cabinet in the adjoining room.

The banshee wails with renewed vigor. Dean claps his hands over his ears, but the sound is a wall of force that knocks him backward, sending both body and couch sliding perilously closer to the balcony doors. He's not too keen on taking the dive onto the hard rock and soil beneath, and so braces his feet against the doorframe and locks his knees to wedge himself there. From this position, his maneuvering options are limited; a desk drawer barely misses his head. "Really, Sam, _any minute_."

Sam searches for handholds to displace the weight of the cabinet painfully crushing his foot, but torque and leverage are not on his side. He has to wrench his foot free with an unpleasant twist of the abused ankle and abandon the gun as a lost cause. It's Dean's fault for crashing into the house like an action film hero. How is Sam supposed to keep up with that? Dean is riding the adrenaline trip like a PCP junkie. Sam has nothing but restless nights and a pit of worry in his stomach that is eating him alive.

Presently, though, what Sam has is a banshee to dispatch. The sound is deafening; wax earplugs do nothing to dampen the piercing wail, only sink deeper into his skull. He executes a tumble to collect Dean's discarded shotgun and fires a rocksalt cartridge at the ghost, dispelling her. The cellphone sings shrilly in the silence that follows, accompanied by the ringing of their ears.

Dean sits up and smiles his sloppy, goofy grin at Sam. "About damn time you got here, Princess. What'd you do? Stop for tea?"

"Yep. It was delicious, too, until you started bitching. I mean, what the hell, man? You can't keep doing this. Dashing in--" like he's got nothing left to lose? "--like you're Rambo, guns blazing." Displeasure registered, he begins searching the scattered vanities and wardrobes in the room for the binding object.

Dean is climbing to his feet when the air rushes out of the room--a tangible inhaling--and so the force of the banshee's scream hits the flat of his chest and pushes him through the sweeping french doors onto the wrought-iron grating of the balcony. He wheezes, trying to regain breath that the impact knocked out of him, and digs his fingers into the iron weave to keep from going over the edge.

"Try the locket," he shouts to Sam, but even he can't hear himself over the shrieks.

Sam uses his second shot--nothing left, now, the extra shells are in Dean's jacket pocket--and in the ringing silence as the banshee reforms, he demands unnecessarily loud, "The _what?_"

"The locket. The _locket,_ the thing on her neck." Dean unhooks a hand to point at the banshee's neck and the heart-shaped pendant hanging there. Sometimes it's hard to believe his brother is the college-educated one. In that moment she wails anew, angered, and the force whips through Dean, strains against the fingers of his left hand curled in the iron mesh until three muted pops travel up his skeleton to echo in his skull. He digs his right hand in again and grits his teeth.

He dangles, buffered by the turbulent shrieking, trying not to look down at the thirty feet of air between himself and the rock below. Inside, completely ignored by the banshee, Sam is digging through the lacquered wood vanity for the jewelry box and making a funeral pyre of scarves and lighter fluid on the floor. When the locket catches, the banshee's scream pitches and then dies in a burst of flame and loud--painful--silence. Dean coughs appreciatively. "Made me drop my gun. What a _bitch._"

Sam leans over the balcony, tone completely conversational. "So you'll notice that it was he who stopped for tea who just took out said bitch, not he who ran in first like an idiot."

"Yeah, and you'll notice that you couldn't even figure out the binding components. Pansy. Go back to your Barbie dolls; I have real work to do." He swings, bodily, trying to kick his feet up on the ledge.

"Uh huh. And you would've burned them from down there how?" Sam gloats, arms crossed and a smug grin on his face.

"Would've found a way." Dean manages to kick a knee up, which is more than a little uncomfortable on the swollen fingers tangled in the grating. If he'd have to guess, he'd say he's got a few broken on his left hand. _Bitch,_ he thinks savagely. Then he looks up at Sam, and past Sam, at the flames that are sprouting from the wooden panel floors and climbing the walls. "You set the room on fire? That was your solution? _You set the room on fire?_" Because really? Sam is going to criticize him for dashing in? When he set _the room on fire?_ Yeah, no.

Sam is unimpressed. "And? You ran into a room with a _banshee._ Besides, you should be happy with that. Pyromaniac." He hauls Dean up, mindful of catching the purpling fingers or putting too much weight on his own bruising ankle. Behind them, the fire spreads quickly, hungry for the dry and brittle wood.

They collect the shotgun that the flames are starting to itch towards and heads down the stairs, but Sam stops him and gestures at the upturned cabinet. "Wait wait wait. My gun's under there."

Dean stares at him like he's brain-damaged. "Burning building. Not structurally sound. Ringing any bells for you?"

He lingers a minute, in time for a beam to give an ominous creak in the next room, followed by a sharp snap. The floor shakes and groans. Sam rolls his eyes, glares at him as he heads down the stairs in a lopsided partial limp. "I blame you. I liked that gun."

"Don't blame me. I'm not the one that lost a fight with an inanimate object. _Pansy._" Dean kicks a teacup at Sam's feet and grins wickedly.

From a safe distance, they watch the house erupt in flames. Dean crows appreciatively when the second story collapses, and claps Sam on the back. "Overkill, but it's an impressive show. Good job." In his pocket, his cellphone chirps a reminder of a missed call, but he reaches in and silences it.

* * *

Three weeks following that mess in the graveyard in Wyoming, the hunting community is still giving Sam and Dean a wide berth. Superstitions run deep among those who walk the darkness--a pinch of salt over the shoulder, unbroken mirrors, knocking on wood--and the Winchesters are Bad Luck no matter which way you look. But they've got a few contacts that are willing to stick it out, and so a couple of possession cases in Mississippi fall into their lap the next morning.

Dean is not about to let a busted hand keep him from sending a few demons back to Hell, and jury-rigs a splint for the breaks using popsicle sticks and duct tape. He looks like a craft-store rendition of Edward Scissorhands, but he's proud of it and holds his hand out to admire his handiwork--_ha!_--before setting about negotiating the mechanics of steering and shifting with only one functioning hand. Sam folds his long legs into the familiar confines of the passenger seat and settles with a book to keep himself occupied for the hours to come.

They drive.

A Southern summer is hot and uncomfortably humid. Worse--the dashboard fan had ground to a halt before they'd crossed the Wyoming state line, and Dean couldn't be bothered to stand still for the twenty minutes required to fix it. They roll down the windows of the Impala and dare the mosquitoes to try and catch them, flying down the highway at criminal speeds. Dean manages to keep the cops away from them by force of will alone.

Stereo notwithstanding, the drive is mostly silent. Sam has enough to occupy himself, worrying over the mechanics of demonic deals and trying to find answers amongst the fading print of dusty tomes. Dean's thoughts are on the cellphone sitting on the bench seat beside him, that doesn't ring but constantly threatens to. The two most recent messages in its call history are from Joshua and Finnegan--hunters Dean hasn't seen since he was working solo gigs during Sam's Stanford years, and the kind of men that wouldn't call him up on a whim. But he has a pretty good idea what they'll say when he checks his voicemail, because he's received three messages from other contacts saying the same thing. It's inevitable the call will come in that Dean can't ignore. He's just waiting.

So their life is reduced to a kind of routine: drive, hunt, kill, research, drive, hunt, kill, monotony broken only by food and sleep and complaints about the heat. They smoke the demons in Mississippi.

Exorcisms have become familiar in the wake of Wyoming, so much so that Dean has stitched the Latin into the lining of one of his favorite collared shirts and Sam's accent is slipping out into the rolling cadence of the words. It's embarrassingly easy to put the demons down, trap them and send the fuckers sailing. At one time, that might have been important to them--to regain a little of the ground they lost when the yellow-eyed demon claimed their mother and then their father, to take back some measure of control and be able to hold back the darkness, to feel _safe_ in a world full of monsters. But it doesn't matter. None of it matters, at least not to Sam, because they sit on the verge of losing something more important--each other--and the hunting is just static to cover the silences that they aren't speaking into.

They've said all of ten words between them about the deal, but it's all Sam's thinking about. Dean is coping in his own way, fast-talking and fast-moving and everything just so _fast_ that it borders on frantic. (But Sam doesn't want to see it that way so he doesn't. It's just Dean, it's just how he is, isn't it?) Dean is mechanically efficient, inconsiderate of the fact that every demon expunged might soon be his close company. Perhaps it's reckless abandon: that if he must go down in flames, he'll take as many as he can with them. Or maybe he wants to make that stupid, stingy demon regret she'd even given him a year to live, and do it by carving the price into the fire and brimstone with black demon souls.

Sam doesn't need the dangerous set of his brother's shoulders. He doesn't need reminders of how Dean was after Dad died. (Blood on his face.) Every demon Dean throws down and douses in holy water is a question: who is he mourning?

He wants to shove him. _I'm looking, damn it. _But he doesn't. He is moving, arguing Sam, with his long silences and hours spent at the local library and only a fraction dedicated to their current case. He doesn't say anything about the deal. He just quietly trusts the fact that he will save him, and spouts another _regna terrae, cantate Deo._

_Psallite Domino. _Praises to the Lord.

Eventually they stall, and Dean doesn't have anything else to do but stutter to a stop and book a room at the motel until they can dig up another case. He's itchy, being forced to ground, but Sam immediately retreats to the sanctuary of yet another library. By the time he returns, backpack slung over his shoulder and laptop fan humming faintly from prolonged use, it's dusk. He deposits his things at the foot of his bed wordlessly.

"Find anything good?" Dean asks, looking up from where he's cleaning the guns.

"Sure." He collapses onto the bed that isn't covered in weapons, burying his head in the pillow. There's a headache building behind his eyes--too much reading.

The Walther comes together like pieces of a puzzle in Dean's expert hands. Weapon maintenance is probably the _only_ thing he'll sit still for, nowadays, and even that is strained. He's fishing for something when he asks Sam about any of the potential cases he'd uncovered during the day, and Sam lies admirably and denies seeing anything of merit, but Dean is relentless. There's frustration building in his tone, and something darker, edgier, underneath it, that isn't familiar.

"Oh, so you ruled out the potential tree nymph in Kinkaid Lake, Illinois? I was thinking that there might have been too much rain. And the triple-homicide in the house in McCormick, South Carolina wasn't a poltergeist? Yeah, I can see that, because the house is relatively new. And there was no conclusive evidence that the suicide at Lake Tahoe was supernatural? That's a shame."

Sam lies still for a minute before he decides to play Dean: close his eyes and shove his face back into the pillow, pretending the problems are nothing. "Must've missed those," he says in a muffled voice.

"I see," Dean says slowly, knowing he's cornered Sam. He stands up and tosses the rag on the table, with the audacity to look betrayed as he glares accusingly at his brother. "So when you said you were going to the library, was that to catch up on the _Hardy Boys_? Because it sure as hell wasn't to look for another job. So what then? Because I swear, Sam, if you tell me you were looking into the damn deal then things are gonna get ugly real fast."

"I was looking for an exorcism ritual that doesn't take twenty minutes to recite. Thanks for asking," Sam snaps back.

He's met with skepticism. "Yeah? Any luck?"

"No, not really. But I got a headache for my efforts, so how about we all just shut the hell up?" Lies, all lies. It's all they say to each other--Dean lying about how _fine_ he is with everything and Sam lying about how much work he's doing to make sure it stays that way. It's a pain-in-the-ass dance that he's rapidly growing tired of.

Dean shrugs into his jacket and grabs his wallet from the desk. "You let me know when you want to suck it up and get back to our job." He tosses a newspaper onto the bed beside Sam's head before he walks out the door.

Once there's silence Sam rolls onto his back and digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. Fuck off, Dean. _I'd be doing our fucking job if you hadn't— _No._ I'd be doing our fucking job if_ I _hadn't—_ Whatever. He sleeps less and he's reading and writing and wandering empty useless libraries until he can't focus his eyes anymore, so Dean of all people can just _back off._

His hand finds the newspaper, crumples it with an unnecessarily tight fist before he pulls it up and stares at the front page. "_Roanoke Colony mystery revisited in Greensboro, Indiana,"_ it proclaims. The journalist continues to explain that all electronic communications into and out of the city had ended at approximately the same time: between two o'clock and four o'clock in the morning. When officers from New Castle drove out to investigate, they found empty houses and offices, and the word 'Croatoan' carved into the post of the city's single stoplight. It was being quarantined as a site of a potentially devastating epidemic, but no bodies had yet been recovered.

After he's finished scanning the article he throws it on the floor. Not even a full day standing still.

When Dean returns he's got oil and engine grease on his hands, deli sandwiches in a paper bag, and a six-pack of beer. He slinks in the door without saying anything, like _maybe_ he recognizes that he _might_ be a bit of an ass but isn't going to confess to anything, just wants to see if Sam's going to let it slide.

It's not something that he usually does, and certainly not for small arguments. But the nature of their relationship has fundamentally changed since Cold Oak. ('Since Cold Oak'_,_ not 'since Sammy died' or 'Dean sold his soul' or 'they killed the demon,' because naming things gives them power over you.) And now, with only a year left, it seems stupid to waste it arguing with Sam when he's the one he spent it on. So he sets food and drink on the table next to Sam's laptop and moves to wash his hands.

Sam accepts both without any word about the reasoning behind it. The Mac is humming in front of him, an article about Roanoke Island spread across the screen. Researching their _job_ like a good boy, he notes angrily, but he keeps it to himself. He twists the cap free and takes a sip before he gives Dean a querulous look. "You always have to choose the pain-in-the-ass cases." Translation: apology (mostly) accepted.

It cuts through the tension, and loosens Dean's tongue. "Thought we should head up to Greensboro, check things out. Getting past the quarantine will be a trick, but it's a place to start. Not like we've got a lot to go on, with this one." Dean shrugs and snags a beer, uncaps it with his ring--a flashy parlor trick that's become an ingrained habit--and drops onto the bed. Guiltily, he adds, "I fixed the fan." Like he's only just realized that maybe he's been hitting things a bit harder than usual, and should probably slow down.

"Oh, joy. We can just be half-plastered to 100-degree leather seats now," Sam replies, skimming another article on the Indiana case. "Greensboro? S'what, a day and a half away?"

A day and a half of long, twisting roads underneath the burning summer sun. Less than five thousandths of a year spent driving, just the two of them, just music and an open sky above them. The space doesn't make it less claustrophobic: three hundred sixty-six minus twenty-seven point five...

* * *

About an hour inside Illinois, Dean's cellphone vibrates like an angry hornet, and it shouldn't surprise him that Bobby Singer can communicate by cellular signal just how _damn serious_ he is about Dean picking up this call. He pulls off to the side of a dusty two-lane highway and kills the engine, climbs out into the dry heat, and answers. "Hey Bobby." Abruptly he tips his head back, angling away from the angry voice shouting through the receiver. He has the presence to look slightly guilty.

Sam's been buried in a book for the better part of the last hour, his knees bumping against the dashboard with every jostle of the craggy road. He throws the door open to let in the heat that is, at least, moving. Albeit sluggishly. Stretches his legs out the door without getting to his feet, shoulder against the sticky leather seat, wondering why they can't have a job in Canada or Alaska while staring at the book without really reading it. He's mostly listening.

In the rippling heat from the pavement, Dean paces and scrubs at the back of his neck. He speaks into the phone, "Yeah, Bobby. _I know. _I've--" Boots scuff in the dirt, and Dean folds his free arm across his chest sullenly. Sam muses over the words through the stifling heat. Bobby must be lecturing, because Dean picks disinterestedly at fuzzballs on his shirt with popsicle stick fingers.

There is a very noticeable moment when the conversation turns, because Dean--who is always so full of restless energy, fidgeting and humming and drumming--becomes absolutely still. Sam looks up, reading the set of his shoulders and back, and the terse crunch of his feet in the gravel. Dean glances at him once, sharply, then paces another five feet in the opposite direction, speaking levelly, "No, I don't have any idea. _Really._ Could be a lot of things." Crickets chirp in the silence: Bobby saying something important and the cellphone holding all the secrets in. Sam catches frustration in the quiet grind of his teeth.

The energy that suddenly possesses Dean is not warm restlessness, but nerves. Nervous energy: the need to move and move and move until he outruns whatever it is that is haunting his steps. He paces in the space between himself and the Impala. "So he said_._ Yeah. Nate, PJ Hawkins, Rollins, Joshua, Finnegan. Hunter--well, _obviously._ He was wondering about--yeah. You think? Yeah, I know what it sounds like."

Sam doesn't recognize some of the names, but Joshua is familiar--Dad worked with him when they were teenagers. All hunters? Might be who's been calling as of late. But about what? Someone working through the grapevine? Dean spares another glance at Sam, his brow furrowed in confusion. "You're not the first to say it. He's good. _Damn _good, and--" Bobby interrupts with something, and Dean nods along. Sam has the feeling that "damn good" isn't going to be "damn good" for them.

"You know we will. Yes sir." The phone slaps shut and is tossed onto the seat. Dean stands between the body of the car and the door, drapes his arms over it and hangs there for a slow minute and stares at the rolling horizon, letting agitation bleed out of him because his life is suddenly too short to be wasted on things like this.

He's waiting for momentum to catch him and propel him in one direction or the other.

Finally, Dean slides into the Impala and starts up the engine. He digs around in the shoebox of cassette tapes for Metallica and catches _Master of Puppets._ It slips into the deck as he pulls back onto the road: clean, simple guitar chords, unsettling. Sam lets the sound roll for awhile, looking for meaning between the words to Bobby and the choice of music. (Metallica calms him down.) After the courteous period of silence he clears his throat. "So what was that about?"

"That was Bobby." Dean doesn't immediately elaborate, choosing his words and sorting out the kernel of truth from the lies he's about to tell Sam. He slides into that fake plastic smile he uses for all his acts, wears it like a familiar leather jacket. "It's the same old bullshit. Hunters that shoot before they think. Somebody else on our trail."

Slouched into the seat, Sam looks all relaxation but he's not fooled. He's been hunting with Dean for most of his life, and knows all the lies and the cons. It's genuine Dean Winchester bullshit, and it's insulting. "Must be pretty good if they've got Bobby bitching you out. _'Damn_ good.' Who would have that many hunters calling you? It's not Gordon; that guy's a friggin' idiot, and most people know it."

"You know what I don't get?" Dean asks abruptly, interrupting Sam. "What the fuck is a banshee doing tossing me out of windows? They're death omens. They aren't supposed to be hurting people."

"They don't always follow the pattern. That Woman in White in Jericho was making men cheat so she could punish them." He switches back stubbornly. "Did Bobby say who he thought it was?"

The conversation rolls on without Sam. "Or maybe it's because I'm already dead? Sold my soul, I'm halfway in the grave already, so she's just trying to finish the job? Put me to rest proper?" Dean is taking jabs, low and painful stabs that Sam doesn't deserve and certainly doesn't need. He flicks the turn signal on and speeds past a little red Camry.

Sam stares at Dean for a minute. "That's cheerful." Shrugging, he falls back against the seat, already making excuses. "I didn't look at the autopsies that closely. Could've been they all had coronaries waiting to happen, and the banshee just played premature reaper. I don't know." After a pause he adds, "So did he or didn't he?"

"Have a coronary? I don't know. Does that mean that _all _death omens are going to take a liking to me? Because that will get old. Demons need to put some fine print on these things or something."

"Ha, ha," is Sam's dry reply. "Well you only need to worry about the ones that like to throw people out windows. And I meant did Bobby know who's following us, jackass." _Battery _rolls into _Master of Puppets,_ and Dean slaps the steering wheel with each hit. The answer hangs in the air. "Six different hunters call you and no one has any clue who it is?"

"_Sam._" It's a warning. He's trespassing, walking into territory that he has no right being on, much less trying to fortify himself there.

"_Dean_," he parrots back. Sam knows where all the land-mines are, and isn't afraid to tread in this place. "The last thing we need is some hunter showing up in the middle of this and screwing everything up because _you_ wouldn't tell me what the hell is going on."

"There's nothing to worry about, okay? I've got it covered."

"'Ignoring' isn't the same as 'got it covered'."

Dean is a ball of tension in the driver's seat. "I'm not ignoring it, okay? This guy knows his stuff. He knows where to go and what questions to ask, and a bunch of people are getting a really bad feel off it. I'm paying attention; I _know _that's bad news. But we're moving fast, and we're only in communication with people we know we can trust, and _nobody_ knows that we're on this job. So yeah, it's covered_._" He wraps his fingers around the steering wheel, tight, and glares at the stretch of sunny road like he could will a storm cloud into existence. The Impala takes a turn uncomfortably fast, and a duffel bag slides across the backseat with the centripetal force.

The set of Sam's jaw is stubborn. "And you didn't think that maybe I should know this, too?"

Dean locks his arms against the steering wheel and sinks into the driver's seat. "It's not your problem."

Incredulity, mixed with a fair bit of resentment. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Because this guy's not looking for _us_." His thumb taps the steering wheel agitatedly, and even though the Impala is edging toward ninety, Dean's foot finds the accelerator pedal. Fast, faster, faster still--no matter how fast he goes, he can't outrun the things that are chasing him. "He's looking for _me_."

* * *


	2. I:ii Flesh and Blood and Tears

_I.ii Flesh and Blood and Tears_

_Ting ting ta-ting._ A dusty wind chime somewhere, and miles of golden wheat stalks that flutter and bow beneath the gentle ripplings of wind. The image is bleached, raw and grainy colors spilling and crashing into each other, hypersensitive eyes burning with neon filament after-images. Somewhere, someone is saying something but the words can't be heard, just the whispering of the wind.

Static fills his ears, and it pulses--discharged energy, images superimposed upon each other, stop-motion in the random surges of time-flow. Standing outside of an exam room in a Rivergrove clinic, Dean taps the ammo clip against his palm and hears the satisfying drum of a full cartridge settling. He slides it into the gunstock. It resonates, thick and heavy and final: _ca-click. _But when the door swings open, it's not Rivergrove.

Messy, violent scratches carved into a telephone pole with delicate, trembling hands: _SAM-I-AM._

The scene shifts, violent clash of images in his mind, accompanied by the faint thrum of energy. A young woman, long wavy blonde curls like Jess had, bubblegum pink blouse and matching lip gloss, shoulder bag carrying philosophy textbooks and an art sketch pad. She twines her nimble little fingers with his and leans in close to trace kisses along his jaw, laughs in his ear, "When we get him, we'll make him into our very own work of art. Flesh and blood and tears. He'll wish his baby brother had _never been born._"

Somewhere, an empty room: hospital bed with neat, clean sheets tucked in at all the corners, a poster on the wall of ducks swimming merrily in a pond. There's no one there, but someone is breathing into the silence, _One, two, three... one, two, three...,_ and a heart monitor is blaring asystole. Far away, a wind chime plays a melancholy tune. _Ting. Tingaling._

* * *

It lingers, long past when Sam wakes up to clammy gray pre-dawn. The wash of static on the radio is the dull ringing of a flatline in his ears, convenience store coffee is the thick coppery, electric taste in his mouth, each pothole is a jarring shift of scene that tears up his concentration. A looming headache digs spiked fingers into his consciousness, making every minute of the morning an effort as he tries not to flinch at sudden movement and light.

He doesn't tell Dean about any of it. He sneaks ibuprofen when they stop to fill up the gas tank and explains the other symptoms as exhaustion. Dean doesn't ask, but his concern hovers over Sam like the glow of his flashlight when they dash across the Greensboro quarantine line and when the Feds chase them out hours later. The drive to Roanoke takes a full day longer than estimated because Dean stops their progress at dusk and lets Sam sleep longer in the mornings.

Sam appreciates it, but every time he looks at Dean's face he sees the girl--words that sound like candy but taste like cyanide. _When we get him..._

He believed the visions were gone. They were a thing of stupid demon plans, and he'd watched Yellow Eyes light up like a Fourth of July sparkler. He was _dead._ Dead meant _gone._ That chapter in the Book of Sam was done and shut and _over._

But nothing is ever over, not in the Fucked-Up Family Winchester. It all blurs together, just hit the ground running and never have time to breathe--hunting to avenge Mom, hunting to avenge Jess, hunting to avenge Dad, hunting--and researching and breaking up into savage shards of a person--to save Dean so that he won't _have_ to avenge him. And now this? Psychic visions that tell him nothing useful and everything he can't stand to hear.

He's _brooding_--trailing his little black raincloud on a leash behind him like a ball and chain, and damned if Dean can understand why he has to angst all over the place. But he watches out for Sam, leans against a trashcan after placing his order with the vendor and looks at his little brother waiting patiently on the park bench. Sam's broad shoulders are curved inward, slouching forward slightly like he's trying to make himself smaller, and his face is glazed with faraway thoughts. It stirs something within Dean--murky, unidentifiable and intense and _painful_--and he turns back to collect his food before the emotion can take on meaning and choke him.

Sometimes, when he's standing still and looking at all the things moving around him, he has the urge to _scream_. He's kind of surprised he hasn't yet.

Balancing two hot dogs on his braced hand and the soda cans in his right, he collapses onto the bench next to Sam with a contented grin. Of all the places they could be spending the afternoon, this one isn't too bad. Historic Roanoke is quiet--pretty and pastoral, sun leaking through the rustling tree leaves, southern humidity washed out by the salt-thick ocean breeze. The EMF meter in Dean's pocket hasn't so much as growled the whole day they've been wandering the park. If not for the name carved into the wooden post, no one would know that this was once the site of a demon-virus epidemic.

Of course, 'quiet' isn't helping their case any. Sam hadn't been lying when he'd said it was a "pain-in-the-ass." Even if they had a cure for the demon virus (which they don't) or a way to stop people from disappearing (which they also don't) or a preventative vaccine (or immunity, and, ha ha, yeah, like Dean would ever be that lucky), they still have to find out where the virus is going to strike next and get there before the demon does--and that? That is the sticking point. They've been to Rivergrove, and Greensboro, and now Roanoke, and they don't know anything more about Croatoan than they did when they were in the midst of it.

It's driving Dean a bit crazy. He tries not to let it. "Roanoke's a bust. Unless you want to rent scuba gear and check out the submerged sections after dark, but waterproofing the walkman is gonna be a bitch."

"No, I think I'll pass," Sam replies, dragging himself back into the present and taking one of the proffered hot dogs.

"You know," Dean says, grinning, "if there was ever a time for your visions, now would be it. Isn't that just a kick in the pants? We spend two years trying to ditch them, and the very next month we dead-end ourselves without them." He knocks his shoulder against Sam's, chuckling at the irony of it, and takes a bite of his hot dog.

It's a raw nerve. It's not funny, and Sam rolls with the friendly nudge, trying not to let his displeasure show. He rifles through a stack of informational pamphlets as an excuse to look away. "The only thing I can find that the sites have in common is the carving. Geographically three thousand miles apart, historically four centuries. Maybe a cursed object. It would explain the distance and time. Uncovered in an archeological dig, buyer in Rivergrove picks it up, later sold to some collector in Greensboro. There was conflict between the colonists and the natives over a silver cup, a village was burned down and a tribal leader executed. Maybe the natives slapped a curse on the thing. Summon a sickness to wipe out the greedy settlers?"

"Doesn't explain the sulfur in the blood," Dean counters, speaking around a mouth full of food. "If they conjured anything, it would've been their local brand of hoodoo. Which I'm not saying isn't scary in its own right, but it's no sulfur-bleeding demon."

Sam slaps the pamphlets down on the bench seat, irritated. "Well what do you want me to say, Dean? You're asking me to do in a week what took Dad _decades._" (You're asking me to do in a year what no one has ever done before.)

"I'm not asking you to do it in a week," Dean answers. He leans back and balls up the paper wrapper in his fist. "And it's not like I'm asking you to do all the work. I'm helping."

Sam's head rattles, his body rigid from stress and trying not to strangle Dean. He doesn't mean to get angry, but between the wild drumming of the headache against his skull and the cold compression of time thinning him out, it happens. "But you _aren't_ helping. All you're doing is shooting down whatever I say, and that's not going to help me figure it out. Two hundred fifty people are dead, and I don't have the answers, and you don't have anything constructive to say."

Dean raises his hands defensively, looking slightly amused by the outburst. He starts to say something pacifying, probably already preparing some inane comment about PMSing or nap time or whatever joke he wants to turn this into, but Sam won't have it. He rolls onward, speaking over Dean in the low voice that means he's _serious, damn it:_ "You treat this like it's a _game,_ and it's _not,_ okay? So just _stop._ It's not funny anymore."

"Hey, I'm not treating this like a game," he answers, frowning slightly. "Just because I'm not stressing over the job doesn't mean I'm not taking it seriously."

"_I'm not talking about the case!"_ Sam shouts. "I'm not talking about the stupid case, and you know it! Don't play dumb. It's all bullshit, Dean. All the fucking time, and I'm sick of it!"

People are starting to watch them. With a sigh, more fond exasperation than concern, Dean says softly, "Well, what do you want me to say? I got what I want. You're alive, and being a punkass bitch like you always are, and I'm not going to apologize for that. I'm enjoying myself. You should too, Sammy. You're way too tense." He claps him on the shoulder.

Sam makes a frustrated, choking noise, because he really cannot believe how infuriating his brother is. He's smiling that same fake grin, and it's all Sam can do not to put a fist to his face. Dean tries to usher him out of the park and away from the scene that they're making here, but Sam shrugs angrily out of the gentle guiding touch and storms off toward the Impala. In his wake Dean collects Sam's untouched soda and smiles apologetically at the bystanders.

The cellphone goes off in his pocket. He contemplates letting this also go to voicemail, but Sam could probably use a couple minutes to cool down, so he leans against a tree and fishes it out. "Speak."

He's expecting more information about the mysterious, unknown man that is following him, but the hesitant voice on the other end isn't a hardened hunter telling him to keep his head down. "Dean Winchester? It's, uh, Toby Parsons. There was a guy that came by today, asking about you. I thought I should let you know."

Toby is another of the small collective of hunter's kids, one that he and Sam had known years ago when they were also being passed between safehouses. He can't have graduated high school, probably still a sophomore or a junior suffering through the daily grind, still just a _kid_. It's a sore spot for Dean. The hunter--whoever has taken it as a personal mission to hunt him down--has _no right _involving kids.

He scrubs at his face, and says reluctantly, "Hey Tobes. Hunter or Feds?"

"Hunter, I think," is the tinny reply. "He was asking a bunch of weird questions. Wanted to know about a job you and your dad worked with my dad. Something in southern Wyoming, involving black dogs. And why you wouldn't take me hunting with you after the funeral. And then..." Dean can hear him fiddling with a phone cord on the other end, and he can see the kid nervously twisting it around his finger. "And then he asked what you thought about my mom."

"Your _mom?_" Dean bristles. Toby's mother had been a hunter, had been bitten by a werewolf and put down. Toby was four, and staying at Bobby Singer's at the same time Dean and Sam were, and it was the kind of grief that Dean _understood._ But the idea that _anyone_ could know him well enough to think to ask that... It made things personal. A chill chases up his spine. His instincts--the very ones that kept him alive, that tell him when to duck and when to shoot and when to dive for cover--are whirling into action, warning that this whole mess is something more than a grudge match between hunters. There's something big happening here.

On the other end, Toby swallows. "Yeah. Dean, I don't think... I think you should be careful, okay? I'm. Um. I'm not sure what just happened, but I'm pretty sure it's not a good thing. Okay?"

"Yeah. I'll be careful." The receiver clicks softly. It settles hot and rolling in Dean's stomach.

He rakes a hand through his hair and tries to sort out what he's going to tell Sam. His brother doesn't need anything else to worry about, if the most recent outburst is an indicator of his stress level. But if he's being hunted and the guy knows enough to ask deeply personal questions, then it probably knows the best way to hurt Dean is to go through Sam. An informed Sam is an armed and dangerous Sam.

He's pacing by the Impala, still itching for a fight, when Dean arrives. Immediately, the barbs dig in. "You know, you're _impossible_."

"Yeah," Dean agrees tersely. He leans on the roof of the car, baking in the June sun, and stares hard at Sam. "I'm absolutely impossible. But you're gonna stand there and _take _it for a minute, because I have something to tell you."

Sam narrows his eyes, trying to figure out where the slight-of-hand or the false bottom in the words lies, because Dean never volunteers a serious conversation. It's got to be a trick. But no--he's leaning forward, sincere and slightly nervous. That takes all the fire out of Sam's anger, replaces it with cool dread. "What?"

"I've received fourteen calls in the past week or so, about my new fanboy. Anyone from Old Man Carson to Bobby Singer, all of them telling me to keep my damn head down. Whoever this guy is, he's done his research. He knows where to go and who to ask, and he's moving _fast._ I think we've got to face the possibility that it might not be human." He taps his fingers against glossy black paint, staring at the arcing reflection of trees and a cloudless sky instead of Sam's face.

Sam swallows dryly. "What are you thinking? Bobby would recognize a demon. What else would be looking for you?"

"I don't know. It takes a lot to scare hunters, but fourteen of them have called me to tell me they're worried, alright? Nobody knows _anything. _So just--" He shakes his head. "Just get in the car."

A couple seconds earlier Sam would've argued the point adamantly, but now he doesn't. It guts him to realize that he's more accustomed with the lies, and that hearing unforced honesty--even this small piece--stuns him. He doesn't want to think about what this shit has done to his relationship with his brother. It's the only thing he has left, and he can't tolerate the demons corrupting it and twisting it back upon them.

Stunned though he may be, he's not going to let go of a perfectly good grudge. Angling for stubborn and hitting sullen instead, Sam slides into the passenger seat. "Where are we going?"

"In danger of saying something _constructive,_ we should visit that doctor from Rivergrove. She's still living in Oregon. You were immune to the demon virus thing, so I've been thinking maybe we can use your blood to make an antivirus or something. We could see what she thinks, because she's encountered this before and probably knows more about the science than we do."

"Whatever," Sam answers and sinks into the passenger seat. He does his best to ignore Dean when he starts drumming on the steering wheel. Every time Dean flashes that stupid happy smile or laughs a bit too easily, it's a knife-twist to the stomach because he knows what the happy mask is covering up: something raw and terrified. It hurts just to look at it.

* * *

"Days, Sam. _Days._ Not to mention the gas, which ain't getting any cheaper, or the hell on the undercarriage, and it's time for an oil change. Oh, and, don't forget, we almost _died_ trying to save them all last time. For fuck's sake, all I want is a little gratitude."

Dean is growing to regret this idea. They'd found Doctor Jennifer Lee working in a small college clinic a few miles over the Oregon-Washington border. When Dean had explained his ideas, she had whipped out the intellectual elitism card and pontificated at length about the vast distinction between practitioners and immunologists and whosawhatsits (he'd stopped paying attention thirty seconds in), and then Sam put on his college cap and talked "shop" with her while Dean fiddled with the tongue depressors and cotton balls. His brother managed to convince her to take blood samples from both of them and compare it to what she had on file about the Tanners, to look into the possibility of a vaccine, but she'd been reluctant.

"She's not a bad person, she just doesn't want to be involved," Sam protests distractedly, entrenched on his motel bed amongst books and medical journals and demonology texts and a couple moldy things that Dean wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. When Dean scoffs, he looks up sharply. "She's just _afraid,_ Dean."

And that much was true--the twitch at the corner of her mouth when she smiled, the relieved slump in her shoulders when they'd excused themselves, and the dreading expression when they promised to return in a few days to check the progress. She'd asked them for a phone number, instead, with politeness in her voice and false promises of not wanting to inconvenience them. And they had smiled and obliged, whatever they could do to put her at ease.

It makes Sam uncomfortable to know that he and Dean poison the normal life he once coveted by their mere presence.

It annoys Dean.

Well, it's probably the lack of direction and momentum that annoys Dean, and Doctor Lee is the unfortunate victim of his stir-crazy wrath. He mills about the motel room, leaving orange cheeto residue on whatever he touches. "We go out, and get banged up and bruised--fuck, I mean, look at my hand, it's held together by freaking popsicle sticks--and then people treat us like _we're_ the bad guys. It's crap."

"That's part of the job, man," Sam replies mechanically, focus returned to the documents he's translating on his computer. "And I'm invalidating your argument on grounds of hypocrisy. You don't want the civilians hunting, yet you complain when they aren't eager to help. The two conditions are mutually exclusive. Argument dismissed due to logical fallacy." His brilliant case earns him a cheeto in the face. "Besides, I'm sure she'll do everything she can to help us."

"Why are you defending her? What is she--your girlfriend?"

"What are you--in high school?" Another cheeto. He snatches it off the book and eats it before the grease can sink in and stain, hoping that Dean hasn't spit on it or anything.

Dean huffs irritably, and sinks into the chair with his snacks. He practices tossing them in the air and catching them in his mouth. "I'm just saying. We drove all the way out here following our last lead, and she bitches and kicks us out the door." One cheeto bounces off his nose, leaving an orange powder streak.

Sam elects not to respond and perpetuate the cycle, instead begins marking a few relevant notes about demons and blood rituals. But he's only on his second page when he stops, caught by a sudden revelation. All the right pieces have slid together to make some whole image, but the knowledge is slipping away from him as soon as he realizes he has it. He looks up and around the room, trying to find something to jog his memory and reclaim whatever he had just lost. Frustrated, he presses his palms to his eyes.

It was the vision. Dean slid his clip into the gunstock in Rivergrove, but when he opened the door it was someplace else. It was someplace Sam recognizes, he realizes, but it slips out like water through a sieve, leaving him to grasp at fragments. Neat hospital beds, and that flatlining heart monitor, but that wasn't the important part. He'd _just had it._

Across the room, Dean slaps his newspaper down on the table and declares without prelude, "There's a hunt in Seattle. I think I'm gonna go."

Sam pulls his head from his hands, startled, and the last pieces slip away. "You... what?"

"I'm not _doing_ anything here, so I might as well be useful. There's a hunt in Seattle that I'm going to take. Besides, sitting around doing nothing is driving me crazy. Looks like it might be a vengeful spirit, maybe another demon if I'm lucky. Won't take me more than a day or two, and Seattle's just a couple hours away. I'll be back before you know it." Stuffing his stuff into the duffel bag, Dean shrugs.

"But," Sam sputters, still grasping at straws, "we _have_ a job. We're looking for Croatoan, and it's kind of important, don't you think? Two hundred fifty people are missing already. None of the other hunters were there last time; they don't know what we know. We can't just walk away."

Dean scrubs at his face. "I'm not walking away, Sam. I'm definitely in this. But right now we're stalled, and you're absolutely right. We can't do in days what took Dad decades. So we'll research and take the cases that come in between. I'm not doing anything, so I'll take this one. You stick around and check in with the Doc when she has something."

"You're not going _alone,_" he says, in a tone that communicates just how absurd the thought is. He starts shoving books aside, somehow irrationally afraid that Dean will be packed and gone before he can stop him. It's just a feeling that Sam has, wrapped up in the nightmares and talk of hunters and demons--he's worried.

He needn't worry; Dean looks relieved to hear it. There's only token hesitation before he tosses the newspaper to Sam. "University of Washington student found dead in her apartment, doors and windows locked from the inside. Here's the sick part--she was pinned to her own art easel, tacked up with paintbrushes and shit. Supposedly did it to herself. Takes 'suffering for your art' a bit far, don't you think?"

He says a few other things, but Sam doesn't hear any of it. He's too busy staring at the picture accompanying the article. It's right out of his nightmare, ripped directly from the images in his head: wavy blonde curls cascading down her shoulders, bubblegum pink blouse with a white-collared jacket thrown over, mascara and blush and lip gloss. Young, innocent smile beaming at the camera.

_When we get him, we'll make him into our very own work of art. Flesh and blood and tears._

* * *


	3. I:iii To See How Deep

_I.iii To See How Deep_

Dean beats the steering wheel in time with AC/DC's _Highway to Hell_, and crows the words to the windshield in sublime post-hunt euphoria. He's relaxed with the knowledge of a job well done: one more demon sent back where it belongs. Riding the accelerator the turns of the interstate come fast and hard, still too buzzed by adrenaline to consider slowing for an empty highway. The world is--at least for the moment--open and wild and free.

In the passenger seat, Sam is much more muted. Streetlamp light crawls over the Impala in thick beams, catching his face and then disappearing again. There's a pleased grin in these moments of illumination, but also the dark sag of tired eyes.

Sam likes to think he's much sneakier than he actually is, but despite his attempts at discretion, Dean knows that something about the possession case had his little brother edgy. He prepared like he was expecting disaster, making phone calls and double-checking research, and Dean finally put an end to it when he walked in on Sam restocking the medkit with twice the supplies they need. Anyone carrying that much medicine is practically begging to be jinxed. But the entire exorcism went off without a hitch. They rescued a poor art major from nearly becoming his own charcoal centerpiece and, excepting the need for therapy, he was fine.

Dean has his suspicions about what it all means. Usually he wouldn't say anything about it, because Sam's business is Sam's business and Dean isn't interested in _talking_ about it. But there's something larger here, that's drawing together from fragmented pieces of silence between them the past two weeks, and it tastes sour in his mouth. They hit a bump in the road that jostles the car, and something tumbles into place in Dean's mind.

"Are you having visions again?"

It startles Sam out of his good mood, and for a moment he can only blink and rewind the last few seconds to confirm he hadn't missed any lead-in to that question, but no. It was music and drumming and then a bombshell dropped between tracks as the radio station paused for station identification. That's so very Dean, to approach a conversation like it's a tactical maneuver, direct and swift with the element of surprise.

The frown of annoyance on his face is genuine, even if the confused and imposed-upon tone isn't. "No, I'm not. Didn't we go over this already?" He isn't sure why he lies, except that it's habit and there's something cool wrapped up tight in his stomach.

Dean slides into sarcasm with self-righteous affront: "Have we gone over the 'You're acting like something bad is going to happen' thing already? Not to mention the 'You look like shit' thing, and the 'Have you been sleeping?' thing."

"Look in the mirror, man. You aren't exactly dashing yourself, and neither of us has slept." Demon hunting is dangerous business. All of Sam's actions could be reasonably explained as caution and preparedness. Dean is grasping at straws--he hopes--and will back down if Sam doesn't give him any ammunition.

His thumbs tap against the steering wheel, eyes straining out past the range of the headlights. "I don't know what's going on with you lately. You're all... sulky or something." Dean waves his hand in a 'wishy-washy' motion.

"It's four o'clock in the morning, man. What do you expect? It's been a long night, we're hungry, exhausted."

"I'm not just talking about tonight. You've been like this since Greensboro, and that was almost two weeks ago, and now the twitchiness tonight. And you won't tell me what's going on inside that oversized head of yours. I thought maybe the nightmares were back, only I don't know why you wouldn't tell me about it if they were. Things just... they don't feel right, between you and me."

Guilt rolls through him, bitter and hot. Sam is thankful for the darkness. He's searching for an answer for that when the radio cuts out, interrupted by the strained chords of the Emergency Broadcast System burst from the speakers. Dean reaches down and turns the volume up.

_"The CDC has issued an immediate quarantine of Mercer Island due to a viral outbreak of unknown nature. All mass-transit routes and services to and through the area have been shut down. State and federal authorities will be enforcing borders. Be advised to remain indoors and--above all--remain calm. Report any flu-like symptoms to emergency dispatchers and you will receive medical help promptly."_

After the message finishes playing, the station picks up with the end of _Paradise by the Dashboard Light. _Dean shuts the radio off and stares at the running yellow lines of the road, appearing briefly in the headlights before dissolving black into darkness. The previous conversation fizzles into silence in the wake of the news, all thought of food and rest evaporating. In a dry, sarcastic drawl he says, "Well that's convenient."

Coincidences like that don't just happen. This is staged_._ It makes Sam's head spin, underneath the gravity of it. He follows dreams about a demon girl to Seattle, and Croatoan happens to show up at the same time? It's like someone gift wrapped the case for them: demon in a pretty package, neat bow tied on top. But he doesn't trust it. This has oily fingerprints all over it, something big and bad subtly nudging him into place just like in Cold Oak. But what would demons stand to gain by leading them here?

"It's got to be a trap."

"Well, yeah," Dean replies with a roll of his eyes. "There's no way the demon just showed up here. Now grab the map and navigate for me, will you? Gotta find Mercer Island."

"Are you even listening to what I'm saying? It's a trap. It _wants_ us to run in there. We haven't slept, we just ran an exorcism, we're out of holy water--we can't take this thing right now." God, the dream, that stupid flatlining heart monitor. He's sick with dread, because it feels like they're rushing to their deaths. They can't go. They cannot go.

"But we can't wait, either. We've got half a day before people start disappearing, maybe the full day if the CDC is on their toes with this. This might be the only opportunity we have to tag the bastard, unless it decides to drop right on top of us again. So yeah, it kind of sucks, but when doesn't it?"

"Why do you do this?" Sam asks, throwing his arms up in nervous, angry exasperation. They're both shouting, even though the radio is off and the world outside is thick with early morning silence. "You want to know why things 'just don't feel right'? It's you and your freaking _martyr complex._ You think you're indestructible or expendable or whatever, but you're not!"

"It's not even about that, Sam!"

"It is! It's about all the shit that we aren't saying to each other! It's about you being the god damned Energizer Bunny, never stop moving, never stop hunting. Are you trying to buy your salvation? Maybe if you save enough people you'll get out of this? You are throwing yourself on the alter, and I want you stop, Dean! Stop _sacrificing_ yourself!"

An orange band of sodium vapor light slides across their faces, and for one frightening moment, they glance over and don't recognize each other. Dean sees Sam so very tired, exhausted and jaded by the weight of things he shouldn't have to carry, dying in terrified pieces just like Dean is dying in hours. And Sam sees Dean like a wild, frenzied thing, feral and dangerous and _trappedtrappedtrapped_, almost willing to bite off his own foot to be free.

They look away. Dean changes lanes even though no one is on the road. He swallows. "Are you going to grab the damn map, or do I need to pull over and ask for directions?"

Sam complies.

* * *

Mercer Island is an ominous dark mass looming above the waters of Lake Washington, shrouded by pre-dawn fog. The streetlamps that light the bridge leading to the island trail three hundred meters into the water and then stop, halted in a cloud of debris where the road has collapsed. What can be seen of the island landscape appears to be suburban sprawl: the broad reflective windows of upper class housing crawling up the hillside from shore to crest.

Slouched inside his jacket, Sam shivers, fighting off the chill and the silence. "It's escalating," he breathes. The words form into a cloud in the air and drift away. There are at least ten thousand people, maybe twenty, on the island--certainly more victims than the other three sites combined. Staring across the water, he tries to imagine ten thousand people suddenly vanishing: alarm clocks going off unchecked, breakfast set out with no one at the table, the morning news playing for silence. Not for the first time, he wonders where people go when they disappear.

"Yeah, I got that," Dean says sternly. "This sure as hell ain't Rivergrove. We're twenty minutes outside of Seattle; the cops couldn't miss this place if they tried. The demon wants to be found." At times like this he is a perfect imitation of their father: hard lines and angles, dramatic shadows, steady hands loading guns. They have no holy water, no miraculous cure for the demon virus, just an exorcism ritual and bravado and not nearly enough lead.

Dean taps the ammo clip against his palm and hears the satisfying drum of a full cartridge settling. He slides it into the gunstock. It resonates, thick and heavy and final: _ca-click._ Sam swallows hard and looks away.

They stow aboard a boat full of soldiers headed for the quarantine zone. Once on the shore, Dean gives the EMF meter an experimental wave, but it whines in protest. He frowns and turns the volume down, then shoves it in his pocket, crackling quietly. "There's too much electricity on the island; we won't get any trace from a demon unless it's standing on top of us." They move up the hillside toward the houses with guns drawn.

"This is the stupidest thing we've ever done, you know that?" Sam hisses. "How are we supposed to find one demon in twenty thousand people if we can't use the meter? Just wander around and _Christo_ everyone?"

"How are we supposed to find one demon just standing here arguing about it?" he bites back.

Sam reaches out, trying to catch Dean's jacket and make him stop and listen, but his brother is too far ahead and his fingers curl on empty air. He grits his teeth. "You're going to get _infected_. God _damn_ it, Dean." Despite all of Sam's arguments--or perhaps in spite of--Dean will not be deterred; he is a force to be reckoned with. Sam trails after him feeling angry and useless, frozen like a deer in the headlights in the face of the future rushing towards them.

The neighborhood they've landed in is quiet, full of happy families sitting down for breakfast blissfully unaware of the quarantine around them. Dean knocks politely at these doors and tries not to scare people when he tells them to take shelter in a basement. Sam twitches every time Dean is within arms' reach of a person, watching for the flash of metal or teeth or nails. But the people are docile and Dean feels like he's doing something to help when he lifts a little boy into the arms of his father in their tree house.

It's two blocks over when they meet the first signs of infection. Windows are broken and cars are abandoned in the middle of the street. Frightened, sickly people scream at them in shaking voices to take what they want, please, just leave them alone. As they move farther, the beady eyes that stare out from darkened windows are no longer frightened but paranoid, then aggressive, then _hungry._ The people represent a timeline: the more prone to violence, the longer they've been infected. The virus is spreading outward radially, taking time to infect and incubate before swallowing more. By silent consensus the brothers move inward toward the point of origin and--hopefully--the demon that started it.

They round the street corner and the low mutterings of the EMF meter in Dean's pocket turn to shrieking. There's a little girl standing in the middle of the street, wearing a nightgown and dragging a stuffed animal behind her. Her face is flushed with fever. She grins sloppily at them, eyes unfocused and head canted to the side like she's not really all there, tongue poking through her gapped teeth. Then she drops her stuffed animal and charges them.

Dean has the gun up and aimed before she's taken two steps, and he doesn't hesitate. _Bang!_ The little girl is thrown backward by the force of impact, despite her forward momentum. It's not a kill shot; if she's possessed, they'll need her alive long enough to exorcise. Blood gushes from the shoulder wound, but her dazed eyes don't react to the pain, only snarling when Dean steps closer to wave the EMF meter. It squeals, confirming that she's possessed. He doesn't think about the smooth action of the pistol or the arc of her body to the ground, limp as a rag doll. He salts a circle around her and listens to Sam chant the exorcism, mind carefully blank.

Nothing happens.

He waves his hands wildly. "What's happening? Why isn't it working?"

"I don't know. It's an exorcism; it can't not work." Sam repeats the ritual from the beginning, paying particular attention to his pronunciation and inflection, but it still has no effect. The child hisses at them, and clicks her teeth menacingly. They search the body for one of the binding seals, like Meg had used, but find nothing. Finally, Sam has no alternative but to conclude, "Shit, Dean. I don't think she's possessed."

Dean's not having it. He waves the EMF meter above her again, listening to it crackle and spit whenever it gets near. "It's definitely her. Concentrated EMF. Either she's a cyborg, or she's possessed."

"Exorcisms can't not work, man. I'm telling you, she's not--"

A staccato rain of bullets interrupts their conversation, and both of them reflexively duck. Dean seeks shelter behind a Lexus, Sam behind a miserably short row of mailboxes. The sharp report of the guns echo through the street, and Dean recognizes the sound: Berettas, military issue. He peers through the shattered windows of the car and grimly finds what he is expecting. The army men fan out in precision formation, moving toward himself and Sam with guns raised. Infected? It doesn't matter; they're probably so trigger-happy they'll shoot anything that moves. He ducks back down and swears softly, "_Fuck._"

There is a no-mans' land of concrete sidewalk and green grass and empty space between himself and Sam. The mailboxes are meager cover at best, soft metal that won't stop bullets and not bulky enough to hide his large form. With civilians, Sam might be able to sprint the distance before they could return fire, but he doesn't trust it with trained soldiers. Sam is pinned, and when they open fire it'll go straight through the aluminum lockboxes and right into his brother. There's nothing for it; Dean will have to make a distraction.

He kneels down and signals Sam to move on without him, meet him further down the street.

Sam's eyes widen. He shakes his head vigorously, _No. No Dean don't you fucking dare. _They can't do this; it's a trap, Dean isn't immune, he could be infected, he could disappear and Sam would never know what happened to him, _no._ He's on his feet, about to chase down his idiot brother and gunfire be damned when Dean throws the rock. It hits a Porsche the next house over, setting off the car alarm, and then he runs the opposite direction of Sam under partial obstruction from a set of hedges.

He tracks Dean's movement around the corner of the house, and he doesn't think he got hit, but he doesn't stop to think too long on it. His long legs carry him down the street to the tune of gunfire and pounding military boots, wheeling around a trampoline and over a wooden fence into a manicured backyard. He weaves from yard to yard in a nonlinear path roundabout route, dodging the artfully exposed front gardens and random _loud_ gravel paths. Finally he spots an elegant oak door tucked out of the direct line of site, picks it fluidly, and ducks inside.

The house is silent. He sweeps the rooms thoroughly with gun drawn and pulse pounding in his ears, until satisfied that he is truly alone. Then he sinks down into a corner and breathes. He'll wait out the military men, then head off in search. Dean'll be okay. Probably got himself into some sort of trouble or other, and he'll be sitting smug expecting Sam to get him out of it, as always, but everything will be just fine. The reassurances sound paltry in his head.

The kitchen sink comes on with a gush of water; Sam jerks toward the sound in alarm because there _definitely_ wasn't someone there before. His grip on the gun tightens as he moves into the adjacent dining room, keeping to the shadows of the nearest wall and listening. Pots clamor, then and something is set on the stove. Who--or what--would be cooking lunch during a military quarantine?

A low, curling voice drifts from the kitchen. "It doesn't do to be lingering in doorways. Come in, I've just set some water on to boil."

It's a voice full of cool confidence--self-assurance in such great abundance as only the truly wicked possess. If it is what Sam thinks it is, the bullets in his gun won't do more than anger it, but he trains his gun against the graying head of hair as he slides into the room. His voice is cold as steel: "Who are you?"

The grin the thing turns on him is sickly sweet, like the cat that caught the proverbial canary. It carries the appearance of a middle-aged man in a tailored gray suit, with creases of a familiar fake smile framing his mouth, but Sam isn't fooled by the image. It's a demon. With a flourish of the hand, it executes a half-bow that would look ridiculous on anyone less sincere. "I am Belial. Duke of Hell, and proprietor of souls. And you--I certainly know who you are. Something of a celebrity among us, the great Sam-I-Am."

Sam's expression hardens, and his mouth forms a grim line. "You called me here, didn't you?"

"Mm. Yes, I rather did. But not for the reasons that you expect. I fear you might have mistaken me for someone else." The smile slides into a teasing pout. All the expressions of its face are comically overdone, like a clown or a mime might do in sidewalk performance. It conjures--of all the strange things--an image of Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka, and Sam has the impression that the demon really isn't taking him seriously. It settles under his skin like a slow-burning itch. "You see, I suspect you believe me to be Croatoan, which I most certainly am not. The fool wouldn't know what to do with himself, given a duchy of Hell--probably fill it with his disgusting little _dolls._"

"If you aren't Croatoan you aren't of much use to me."

Its face goes from amused to enraged in a moment. "Aren't of much _use?_" it proclaims, whipping out with invisible pressure and throwing Sam into a wall. The gun slips from his fingers and clatters to the floor, as he is thrown from one wall to another, and another, before finally being pitched into the peninsular countertop. Impact forces a sharp exhale, and for an agonizing moment he rests doubled over against the counter, struggling for breath as the demon rampages in the kitchen.

Finally, Belial settles into forced calm and straightens his tie. "You certainly are Azazel's kind, aren't you? He had a similar way with words." The smirk returns, looking much more menacing than before.

It rifles in the cupboard, and pulls out a box of teabags with a disgusted look on his face. "It's really quite appalling the state that society is in today. So few households have proper tea leaves, preferring the processed, corporate bags. Positively _dreadful_. True cultured tea is a rare delight; I've taken to stocking up whenever I visit England. Sit down, it'll only be a minute more."

Unseen weight drives Sam down into the seat of a nearby barstool. His fingers grip at the countertop with white-knuckled intensity, a visible protest to the treatment. Through gritted teeth he hisses, "Why did you bring me here?"

"Business. Terribly dull, I'm afraid, but it must be done. You see, you were chosen by Azazel to lead the demon army, but he has since been extinguished and you have made no indication to claiming your rightful place. It's made for a right awful mess." The teakettle whistles dully, and the demon plucks it from the burner and pours out two cups. "Sugar?"

He stares at the demon resentfully. "It's your army. Lead it yourself."

"I suppose I could do that. But there appears to be some disagreement as to whom, exactly, ought to take command. Politics, you know--very sordid affairs. You humans like to believe that things are complicated in your own capitals, but really, you can't possibly understand the mechanics of organizing Hell. Demons are spiteful, self-serving, envious creatures, you see. It's a veritable mess attempting to create any coherent functioning body when internal management degenerates to infighting. Azazel, however, was gifted in that respect. He served as right hand to Lucifer, held the faith of the Horde, was believed by many to be a prophet in his own right. He was a legend among us, his power and influence penultimate only to Lucifer's.

"And you--you, dear Sam-I-Am--you are his protégé, his _legacy._ You are endowed with his vision, with greater power than has ever been granted to any human before you. You were chosen by Azazel himself to lead the armies of Hell in victory over humanity, to reclaim the golden land of milk and honey and sit at the seat of power by Lucifer's side. Yet you persist in this errant behavior."

Sam finds the prospect laughable. "Well, sorry. Your prophet screwed up. Give me control and I'll lead them straight back to Hell."

"With your brother in tow, no doubt." The words slide into the conversation, fluid and unremarkable, but so very, _very_ important. Sam goes still, the blood rushing from his face in one fluid gesture. The demon grins, lips drawing back to reveal pearly white teeth. He cradles his tea and breathes deeply, then sigh luxuriously slowly. "Yes, your brother was so very eager to sell his soul. Didn't give much thought to what I might do with it once I had it, though. I'd be willing to restore it... for a price..."

There's too much of a pause before he replies. The shake of his head is jerky, as though half his body wanted to nod yes instead. "No." He wants the word to sound confident, but when he speaks his mouth is dry, and it comes out in a desperate rasp.

"I am being most generous with my offer. There are many demons that find pain a more appropriate incentive than reward. That dear brother of yours, perhaps. He is out there all alone, so very fragile. Just a few pounds of pressure to break the skin, expose him to infection, and then _poof._ I could do that, you know."

"No, you couldn't," Sam replies coldly, shaking his head. "It would violate his contract. He gets a year to live--you can't come collecting early."

The demon catches his eye, and its mouth begins to form a snarl before twisting to a smile at the last moment. "Law school has done you well. Yes. I can't kill him myself. But accidents do happen, and your profession is awfully dangerous. Some day, dear Sam-I-Am, you will find yourself without a brother, and what will you do then? He has been so very kind to you, always bearing the weight of your burdens, taking the unpleasant jobs so you don't have to dirty those pretty little hands. I don't think you understand quite how ugly this world can be. Soon, yes? Three hundred twenty-seven days left now and he'll be mine and you'll be all alone_._"

The words strike without feeling; Sam doesn't look to see how deep the pain and fear runs. He can't do that--not here in front of a demon, not in front of _this _demon. He numbs himself to the world, speaks with all the hope he has: "You won't touch him. He's not going to Hell."

"We shall see, won't we?" The demon sets his tea down on the counter gently and leans forward, feigning a gesture of friendship and confidence. "A piece of advice for you: the trick to the exorcism is to make sure you have all of the demon there. It simply won't do to exorcise a foot or an arm. Farewell." With a croaking laugh, the demon bows and leaves the room. The house is quiet once again.

Sam stands in the bright, empty kitchen, stunned, his eyes unfocused. This was over. It cost them Mom and Dad and everything and why isn't it _over?_ With a sweep of his hand the cups shatter across the floor, splashing yellowed tea across stone tile. His heartbeat slams against his chest, breaths coming short and fast.

Gotta find Dean. He won't let anything happen, he _won't. _He just--he has to find Dean.

He moves like he's underwater, like everything--even gravity--just can't touch him here. He staggers down one street and up another, looking into windows and up cross streets and down sloping driveways for Dean. There's no one there, no one at all; they're too late and the demon has uprooted and this was all an exercise in futility, and if he can't find Dean then he doesn't know what he's going to do, he really doesn't, because he has had as much as he can take for one day. They're going to go to a diner and eat something ridiculously greasy and laugh and Dean is going to make googly eyes at the waitress and then they'll drive to a motel and fall asleep because he is so very tired and

"Hey, whoa, Sammy, hang on there." Dean snags Sam's jacket and hauls him. They'd almost walked right past each other, Dean emerging from a narrow alley and Sam on the sidewalk. Something about the way his little brother is moving makes him nervous. Sam whirls on him too quickly for comfort, but the hard look melts when he sees him, and Dean gives him an uncomfortable half-smile in return.

"Dean," Sam says, relief thick in his voice, and doesn't protest when Dean looks him over. He's a bit worse for wear, eyes slightly glazed and face pale, but no physical injuries that he can see. Such are the pains of suffering a bleeding heart, he supposes. Dean wouldn't blame him for being slightly dazed--not after the day they've had. But it's nothing a good night's sleep won't cure. He lets Sam go but keeps him close. "There's nothing more we can do here, man, okay? They're gone. We have to get off the island before the Army comes in here and busts this place open."

"Yeah, sure," Sam answers easily. They move toward the shore, numb with fatigue. They both want to be gone more than either of them is comfortable saying.

* * *

The day ends early, with them lounging in front of the television eating take-out teriyaki, watching the pictures move across the screen in a disinterested way. It's been long, emotionally and physically exhausting, and they didn't make it more than an hour out of town before Dean coasted down the exit ramp and booked them a room. It is an utter failure. They saved maybe a couple dozen families out of the thousands of homes on the island, and didn't find the demon they were searching for, meaning Croatoan is free to pick another city to wreak havoc upon.

Mostly, they try not to think about it. The television volume is up loud enough to override their thoughts with cheery mattress store jingles and the droning voice of a used car salesman.

Sam is almost asleep over his rice bowl when Dean starts speaking, and it's the quiet in his voice that pulls him back to wakefulness. Dean doesn't wax philosophical very often--at least not vocally--but when he does it's always worth hearing. A rare insight into the mind of a brother that hasn't been open and honest with him since that soft, thoughtful voice was whispering to him under shared bedcovers rather than from across the room.

"Demons are nasty fuckers. I mean--I get vengeful spirits and werewolves and stuff. They're hurt or they're hungry or they're angry and trying to get revenge or something. But demons--what do you achieve by staking a girl with her own paintbrushes? Or walking around all day wearing someone, making them do horrible, senseless things? Turning an entire city into raging zombies and then making them all disappear? It's just fucked up."

Sam doesn't say anything. He thinks about the demon Belial in the kitchen, how his mouth had curled into a smile when he'd said, 'He'll be _mine._' He thinks of his greasy fingers curling themselves around Dean's soul and ripping it out of his body, laughing as he burns him alive in hellfire. Why would anyone want to drag his brother down to Hell? Dean doesn't deserve that, would never in a million years deserve that, and he truly doesn't know how to rationalize the idea that his brother will suffer for eternity to buy him an extra few years. He doesn't understand. He doesn't have the answers.

"They're just evil. It's just their nature--to be evil," Dean concludes. His voice is funny and kind of flat, like maybe that's not how he'd meant to say it but changed halfway through the statement. He feels Dean's eyes on him and feigns sleep, hoping that maybe Dean will finally say the things he can't say when Sam is awake and aware. But he doesn't. Dean pulls the styrofoam bowl and chopsticks from beneath Sam's head and replaces them with a pillow, then crawls into his own bed.

Laying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, Dean thinks about the way the little girl's body had fallen to the ground. He doesn't feel remorse because he'd done what he needed to do. She was infected; there was no saving her. But the memory sits cold in his stomach: the spatter of blood, the graceful arc as momentum propelled her shoulder backward and her body followed suit, how her socked feet had gone up over her head and then come back down. It's not guilt, it's not regret, but it's grief all the same.

As he's following asleep, he hears hellhounds.


	4. I:iv Caprice and the Wind

I.iv _Caprice and the Wind_

San Antonio, Texas is really fucking hot. And not in the way that Dean can _appreciate,_ either, because the only 'curves' the city has are the twisting of the highway entrance and exit ramps. All the babes have apparently fled for climate control. And really, Dean could do the same, except the crucifix standing over the door is a ward against entry so effective he might put demons to shame.

He's never held any interest for theology and has very little patience for those that choose to espouse it, but in light of recent events his tolerance for the 'hellfire and damnation' speech has dwindled to nothing. If he runs into anyone so presumptuous as to lecture him about his state of sin, well. It's much safer for them if he avoids the church unless it's to visit a holy water font or swipe a few rosary beads. What do those sanctimonious bastards really know about good and evil, anyway?

They're only here because Sam thinks that some priest might know something of use about that failed exorcism in Mercer Island.

A "modern-day Exorcist," Joshua had said; _the_ expert in binding rituals and the nuances of sigil writing. Father Derby has supposedly performed more exorcisms than the Winchester family combined--which simultaneously flatters Dean and pisses him the hell off. There's a big difference between putting out a couple dozen lower-level demons and throwing down the _big _ones.

Sam had been adamant about seeing the man, though, and there's really no arguing with an adamant Sammy. Particularly when he's right. They do need help on this job, loathe as Dean is to admit it. They've been on the trail for three weeks now, digging through every potential lead and following up every half-formed theory they can build. The good doctor in Walla Walla isn't making any progress on a vaccine, and they're driving themselves to guilt at having been at the scene of infection _twice_ without stopping the damn demon. He's not opposed to a fresh opinion, but does it have to be from the holier-than-thou quarter?

Led Zeppelin stumbles drunkenly through the chord progression of_ Dazed and Confused,_ and it feels appropriate in the lazy summer heat. He drums idly on the steering wheel with his fingers and turns to stare at the heavy oak door of the rectory. He stares like the power of thought might summon Sam through it. But he doesn't appear, just like it hasn't for the past forty-five minutes Dean's been watching. How much could they possibly have to say? He sings a few lines softly under his breath before giving it up with an exasperated sigh.

He needs a distraction. The desire to be moving and doing and living itches underneath his skin.

In the passenger seat Sam's notes are neatly tucked in a manilla folder. The brightly colored post-it notes and rubber band wrapped neatly around the center make it look gift-wrapped--a token from Sam left to help him pass the time. It's not a very good present, but he's bored and willing to compromise. He opens it and rifles through the pages.

The only documents they have are the sketchy prints produced by photocopying photocopies one too many times. They'd stayed in Seattle to investigate for a few days, but Dean's best forgeries couldn't get them inside the CDC's vault of a quarantine zone. He managed to charm one of the nurses into getting him a copy of the transcripts and medical reports on the survivors, but it's stiff reading material and severely limited in relevant information. There is evidence of Sam's work all over the records: underlines, circles, and exclamation marks, scribbled notes and a statistical diagram at the bottom of one of the pages where Sam had been tracking the progress of the virus in its victims.

Mercer Island is distinctive in that it has infected survivors. To their knowledge, Sam is the only other to have been infected and walked away. But these victims are not quite as fortunate. All trace of the virus is reportedly gone, but they manifest other symptoms: decreased mental faculty, debilitation, episodic amnesia, delirium. Judging by the notes Sam's made in the margins, the symptoms get progressively worse with the incubation period before finally resulting in a full disappearance. The whole thing takes only ten to fifteen hours.

And there's no medical record of a young girl with a bullet wound in the shoulder. Vanished with the rest.

She is the anomaly to their theories. Her inclusion with the missing victims is just another piece of the puzzle to unravel. If Sam has any theories about that he hasn't spoken them yet, and Dean certainly doesn't know what o make of it. The EMF meter had responded like she'd had an electrical transformer inside her, but the exorcism ritual should have expelled any spirit or demon. It calls into question many of their preconceptions about the rituals and what manner of creature could avoid them.

As he skims the medical reports, Dean wonders what manner of virus could do this to people.

The first is of a man displaying "regressive tendencies," making long chains of sounds that are more babble than language. The only words the nurses have been able to make out are an anxious mantra of "lost it lost it lost it." From the condition of his fever and white cell count, they estimate he'd been infected for eleven hours. Beneath that is a report of a woman who'd been infected for thirteen: practically comatose, ranking a seven on the Glasgow scale, a complete inability to speak and only the most basic responses to verbal stimulus.

The next is a testimonial from a semi-coherent, traumatized kid, listed clinically as 'Adolescent Male, PAT01317.' Infected for eight hours, suffering complete paralysis of the left arm. Most of the statement is a stumbling, terrified apology for the crimes he committed, and a desperate plea for forgiveness, but Sam has highlighted a section of the text in thick neon yellow strokes, automatically drawing Dean's attention there. He reads:

**PAT01317: **(whisper) It was the yellow fire.

**Q: **Did you start the fire?

**PAT01317:** No! I didn't start the yellow fire! It wasn't natural fire! frenzy, scuffling; restrained The yellow fire was underneath my skin. It burned. Sometimes it didn't burn yellow, but when it did, bad things happened. Then the yellow fire that ate my arm. It was going to eat the rest of me, too! sob Please, please, don't let the yellow fire eat me. It hurts. It hurts.

**Q:** Where does it hurt?

**PAT01317:** My arm.

**Q:** You have feeling in your arm?

**PAT01317:** (whisper, panic) In the place where my arm should be.

In the margin, Sam has written: _Yellow sulfur. "Foot or __arm__" Meaning?_

'Meaning' indeed. None of it makes any sense at all. Dean tosses the notes aside in disgust, and they slide across the backseat in a scramble of sheets and a ruffle of protest. He sinks into the seat with a weary sigh and scrubs at his face, trying to massage the tension out of it.

He's full of a bone-deep weariness from this case, which stands at odds with his perpetual need for movement. But the two seem inexplicably related, because the faster he moves the more tired he becomes and the more drive he feels to _go go go. _And he can't help but think of what Sam said--that he was trying to buy his way out of hell, or something--and is filled with a frothy kind of glee that tightens his chest more than loosens it.

The breath he inhales is sharp and brittle. He slaps the steering wheel with an open palm.

Sam had _no right_ to say that. For fuck's sake, he moves through the world like he's expecting Dean to implode or something, and it's really stupid. Picking words and subjects carefully, sometimes trying to pacify him and sometimes hiding little barbs in the conversation like Dean is supposed to trip over them and feel guilty or something. But he doesn't. He really, really doesn't, because if Sam is making that stupid bitchface then Sam is alive_._ His son of a bitch, pain in the ass, smart-mouthed little brat of a brother is _alive_. That's all he wanted. He agreed to the deal, he got exactly what he asked for, and he's man enough to pay his dues when it's over.

And for the record? That's not a _martyr complex_, that's _dignity._

They're a week out of Mercer Island, but Sam's words still catch him with a bit of sting. He's not trying to buy the proverbial stairway to heaven. He's _not._ Is there anything wrong with wanting to go down swinging? Take as many of the bastards back with him as he can? It's almost a matter of pride--to make that demon bitch regret ever giving him the year at all, because he is John Winchester's son. His father taught him everything he knew, trained him up since he was five, and he killed the fucking _demon. _His father didn't get any time at all--god _damn_ them--and why they thought he would be any less of a hunter, he doesn't know. But fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all _to hell._

He smacks the steering wheel viciously and digs his fingers into the leather padding. His elbows lock, driving his back and shoulders deeper into the seat. He plants his feet against the floorboard and digs his shoulder blades into the cushion of the seat and presses for all he's worth, wedging himself in and locking all his joints, because the strain feels good. Too long without hunting anything, maybe, or without a decent bloody fight, but now he has something to push against and he sets his teeth and holds the frame of the car back. "I'm fine," he says tersely. "I'm fine I'm fine I'm _fine_." Because he _is_. He's Dean fucking Winchester.

He's out of the car, is what he is. Scrambling out and blinking into the sunlight. His whole body feels twitchy, erratic, like one of those bobblehead dolls that people put on the dashboard of their cars. _Rattle rattle rattle rattle_ he's spinning out on some unseen axis that throws his limbs to the wind. He digs his knuckles into the frame of the door and breathes and tries to unwind.

There's been too much going wrong. If it's not one thing it's the other: hunting a demon that can't be exorcised and stopping a virus that can't be cured and saving people that can't be found, or Sam and his strange fits and nervous gestures and the restless nights he won't tell Dean about it. Or the mysterious hunter no one knows and is questionably not human and knows way too much about Dean to be healthy.

The oak door slaps shut behind him and he turns to see Sam trudging down the steps. He leans back against the frame of the car, giving a brief wave and a forced smile. "I was starting to get concerned. I thought they'd taken you for ritual sacrifice. You're kind of like an altar boy, right? Maybe if they cut off your legs at the knee."

"I've heard you with your Queen tapes, man. If it's falsetto you want, you don't have to look far." He smiles over the roof of the car, warm and loose and relaxed, then he slaps his notes down on the roof and arches back in a mighty stretch.

At the apex of his stretch, Dean bursts into song in his best falsetto--_"Scaramouche! Scaramouche! Will you do the fandango?_"--and Sam buckles forward in a guffaw of laughter. "Dude, stop. _Stop_, or the only thunderbolts you're going to see will be sent from God for that bastardization of Freddie Mercury. I won't be blamed for any righteous smiting."

Dean cracks a grin and slides into the car. Sam follows suit, wedging his notepad between the dashboard and windshield. The words cast a reflection against the glass with idle fascination, and Sam stares pensively through them, putting his thoughts in order.

He's been given a lot of information to digest. It's good research, and there's no doubt that his source is reliable, but it wasn't really productive. Nothing in all the pages of notes he'd taken fits the case the way it ought to. While he respects the recommendations that Father Derby gave him, he feels hesitation, and he's been hunting long enough to know to trust an instinct. If the pieces don't fit quite right, you don't try to force them to fit. You start looking for different pieces.

He keeps turning over all the facts in his mind, looking for that one that will let it all make sense, but returns to the same thing each time. It's something obscure, something Father Derby mentioned in passing that lit up all the right connections in Sam's brain.

"Hey, egghead," Dean prompts, interrupting the silence in the car. "I can see the gears turning in that oversized head of yours. Want to tell me what you're thinking about?"

"Well," Sam begins, grabbing the notes from the dash and flipping through them. "Apparently the seal Meg used isn't the only way to withstand an exorcism, and not even the best. There are binding rituals, blood rites, sacrifices and spells and ceremonies from half a dozen different cultures that can make a demon immune to verbal exorcism. At least half of them are seriously dark, seriously powerful, and a bitch to dispel. However, the guy says they're also extremely difficult to perform, and require days of preparation. So if our demon is bound to that little girl, he'd been wearing her for a while."

Dean's face scrunches up in an expression of protest. "That doesn't make sense. Why spend time preparing a binding ritual you're only going to use once? Or why follow us around at all? Just to snarl in our faces when we catch it, to laugh when the exorcism doesn't work? That's pretty stupid, even for demons."

"It is. That's why I don't think it's doing a binding. At least, not to the body." Sam turns down the radio and twists to look at his brother fully. Dean, of course, can't look back in more than glances while driving, but Sam will have his full attention.

"_Kaschei the Immortal._ It's a popular Russian myth that apparently has some truth to it. The way Father Derby tells it, Kaschei was a _krayl_, a Russian demon, and to escape being cast into _Peklo_, he stored part of his soul inside a needle. He couldn't be harmed unless the needle was also purified, because the physical body was just an extension of himself. He would be unstoppable as long as no one could find the needle. But a hunter, Tsarovitch Ivan, managed to find it and exorcised them both at the same time, finally destroying Kaschei."

"The holy man thinks this is what the Croatoan demon has done?" Dean asks skeptically.

"Well, no," Sam says. "He told it more as an anecdote than an actual option. Apparently Kaschei is the only demon to have ever done such a thing. But I keep coming back to it, every time. What else fits? You said it yourself--why spend days binding itself to a little girl? It's not like one can get very far in a kid's body; it'll have to dispose of it before moving on. And she didn't respond to the exorcism ritual _at all_. Not like a demon ought to under the word of God, not like Meg did. It fits, man. If a demon did it before, what's to stop this one from doing the same?"

It fits better than Dean could possibly know. Sam hasn't told him about his encounter with the demon Belial; he can't do that to his brother, when he's already sold his soul to save Sam from the same kind of situation.

But as much as he knows not to trust the word of demons, that one cryptic comment could be exactly what they need to make a breakthrough on this case. He can't stop thinking about what Belial said: "It won't do to exorcise a foot or an arm." It makes sense--the body is just a limb, an arm or a leg but not the core of the demon. The core is somewhere else, hidden and safe. The more he considers the possibility, the more right it feels to him, and for the first time since Greensboro he thinks that this fight might be possible to win.

Instead of looking triumphant at the discovery, though, Dean's expression is grim. "So let me get this straight. Our demon has taken part of himself and stuffed it in a needle. And this needle--"

"It doesn't have to be a needle," Sam interjects.

"--this something that could be anything could be hidden _anywher_, and we have to find it. Right? Then we have to bring it back here, track the bastard down and get there before he's infected the entire town again, and exorcise them both. Am I getting all that? Because that sounds impossible."

Sam sighs, part bitter frustration and part exasperation. "Now that we know what to do, we can do it; it'll just take a bit more time and a bit more research. It probably won't be easy, but we'll find it. It's not impossible. Someone's done it before."

"Does the lore say how he did it?" Dean asks.

Sam thinks back to the story. "I could be wrong--it's been a while since I've heard the original legend--but I believe it involves an animal familiar. Sometimes a large grey wolf, an enchanted horse, or a firebird. The familiar performs a ritual that bewitches Kaschei. The ritual traps the demon and reveals the location of the needle to the hunter, allowing him to destroy both. In the story of the firebird, it performed an elaborate dance called the 'Infernal Dance' that forced Kaschei to dance. After--"

He's interrupted by the sound of a cellphone ringing. Dean gives a half-start toward his own phone, and they're both surprised to find that it's to Sam's phone instead. He pulls it from his pocket and flips it open with a polite but reserved "Hello?"

The greeting is barely out when Dr. Lee's voice bursts across the line. "If this is illegal, I don't want _any_ part of it."

Sam blinks rapidly, startled. He looks at Dean with a confused expression that Dean returns with a quirk of the eyebrow as he drives. "Um. Sorry, what?"

She sounds frazzled, but underneath is the cool steel edge of anger. "For some reason I thought you two might be capable of a little discretion, given that you're comfortable impersonating U.S. Marshals. But apparently not, because federal officers just showed up at my door--my _house_--asking about you and my research. I didn't think I needed to be explicit, but I'll do so now: I _don't_ want to be involved."

"Wait, what? Feds came? They asked about the vaccine?" They haven't mentioned the research to anyone, and if Dr. Lee is being discrete then there's only one suspect--the hunter. "Did they show you a badge? What did they look like?"

"I don't know, he looked average. Tall, I suppose; middle-aged. And, no, I didn't see any badges. He didn't Isay/I he was a federal officer. But I recognize the awkwardness, the stiff smile and the ill-fittedness from those CDC suits that they stick inside cubicles all day and never let out into the actual world. This guy had it bad."

It's a grim affirmation to Sam. A matching description of the hunter, the very same thing that everyone else has head: an unremarkable appearance and something not-quite-right about him. Dean cuts a sharp glance at him, and must read the information from his demeanor because he huffs a sigh and drums agitatedly on the steering wheel.

"Sam, if this is illegal, they could shut me down. They could revoke my license, they could make sure I don't get a job _anywhere._"

"No, no, I understand. I'm very sorry that happened; we've tried to maintain discretion. That guy doesn't have anything to do with the government. He's our problem, not yours. He won't be bothering you again."

There's a couple beats of silence in which Sam begins to suspect the dismissal has really pissed her off, but instead she says softly, "Mercer Island got hit." His silence is as loud as any words he might have offered, and she takes a shaky breath into the speaker before plunging into a tense and frustrated rant. His placations are lost in the rush of words. "I'm trying, I'm trying my damnedest, but I'm not a virologist and I'm not an immunologist. That was thousands of people! How can I tell why you're immune when no one else is! There are three thousand factors and I've only got four samples to base them against, and I don't even have a good sample of the virus to look at! I can't-- You should find someone else, maybe the CDC, or--"

"Hey hey," he says it levelly, even though he feels the frustration. "You're doing just fine. Better than the CDC, even, because they're still can't find the forest for the trees. Who wants those idiots, anyway? You're doing just fine. Just give it your best, alright? If you can figure this out, it's going to save a lot of people. And if you can't--"

"I can't--" she whines, and she sounds exhausted as she says it. The stress and weight of it is probably getting to her.

He regrets having to press the issue, but they could use as much help as they can get, and can't afford to let this go just yet. "If you can't," he says gently, "we'll find another way. But we'd really appreciate it if you'd try."

They exchange goodbyes, and Sam slaps the phone shut. He plays with the antenna for a moment before tucking it away. "The hunter again. Walla Walla this time, talking to Doctor Lee. How the hell is this thing moving so fast? That's six states in a week. That shouldn't be possible, not even with a private jet, man, unless he knew exactly where he wanted to go. And how? How the hell does he I_know_/I these things?"

Dean shrugs around the steering wheel. The hunter that has been following him has been moving quickly, following his trail of burnt corpses and wasted creatures like they were breadcrumbs. Systematically, he's moved through every contact Dean has ever met, starting from his father's old hunting contacts and moving chronologically forward. Nobody knows anything about this guy, except that he's interested in Dean, wants to know the details of the hunt, how he did it, and sometimes why.

Even Missouri wasn't much help, only able to tell him the hunter was "like a whirlwind" and that if Dean had "any lick o' sense" in that head of his, he'd "get down and stay there." That'd been six days ago, and he'd since heard a similar message from Cassie, Ellen, Jo, and Lenore. Now Doctor Lee. It's moved through a lifetime of hunts in a matter of weeks and is rapidly running out of material; the only thing standing at the end of that trail is himself.

For a moment Dean considers sending Sam away--somewhere far away from himself and the thing that's hunting him. But he dismisses the idea just as quickly. If the hunter can trace Dean then it can trace Sam just as easily; he could become a liability or leverage against him. They're really safer together. And there's no way to track them where they're going--because they don't even know. They're headed out of San Antonio on a south-bound highway, without destination, subject to Dean's caprice and the wind. If this hunter can track them down out there, then it's probably the kind of thing that will find them no matter where they are. What will happen will happen.

So he says, "Well, I'm pretty sure the ritual is a summoning." Because they have more important and productive things to spend time on then fretting about the hunter.

Sam isn't quite at ease with the idea of abandoning the subject. "Dude, are you even listening to me? Hunter. In Walla Walla. We didn't tell anyone about the vaccine, and I'm fairly confident Dr. Lee didn't either. That's not possible."

"And that's not any different than anything else it's done. Now did you hear me? It's a summoning ritual." Sam blinks at the change of subject, and Dean grins wryly. "I was thinking about it while you were flirting with your new girlfriend. You said he performed a ritual, a _dance_, that bewitched the demon and revealed the location of the needle. It's a summoning. They used to call them dances; some still do. Harvest festivals, pagan rites of the moon, wiccan observation of the Earth all incorporate dances meant to call upon whatever deity they're looking to appease."

Sam considers the idea for a long moment. "It makes sense, I guess. If they're both the demon, then both the transient and stationary parts are bound to answer the summons. But I'm not sure it's smart. It'd be like summoning a biblical plague. What if it decides to detour and infect people on the way? The ritual demands that the demon come, not that it come in a timely manner."

"So we do it somewhere there's no one around." Dean gestures to the sprawl of land on either side of them. "We're in the middle of Texas, in case you didn't notice; there's abandoned towns all over the place. We set one up, call the bastard down, and work a little bit of Winchester magic. And good riddance, because this case has been hell on the tires."

"I think this might be the craziest thing we've ever done," Sam says slowly, but he's smiling.

"No, not the craziest," Dean answers, flashing his best mischievous smile. "Remember the mine shaft in Virginia City? With the rattlesnake and the silly string and the bottle of glow-in-the-dark body paint?"

"Oh my god, I can't believe you actually stole the Suicide Table," Sam gushes. "Right under the nose of that really bitchy cashier. And then when the _firecrackers_ went off? And that stationwagon--"

They exclaim in unison, "The look on Dad's face!"

It's an exultant moment in which they're both laughing too hard to breathe. Sam is doubled over in his seat and Dean has to scrub at the tears of mirth around his eyes to be able to see the road clearly. They have a theory, they have a plan, and now all they need is to do it. It feels good. It feels, for the first time since Greensboro, like they might be able to win this one. The crushing weight of guilt falls away before the momentum of progress, and the Impala chases down the highway.

They pass a man wandering on the side of the road, weathered and absolutely unremarkable in appearance. They're both too wrapped up in their own happiness to notice, but the wandering man's eyes follow the Impala as it disappears down the road. He smiles.


End file.
